NEW ANXIETIES ABOUT VOTING
SHALL IT BE COMPULSORY?
MACAULAY, who did not believe in universal suffrage, had a fine sneer at the folly of supposing that the great policies of a modern nation could be determined by the ballot-box. But this will do to put alongside his famous prediction that “spoliation” of the rich by the poor would begin in the United States in the twentieth century. That century is here and spoliation has not begun, while the ballot-box has gone on, in England as well as in America, from one conquest to another; until now, in either country, it is regarded, if not as the final arbiter of national destinies, at least as the power which sets up one party or administration and puts another down. Yet during the very years when voting by the mass of the citizens has been marching on to political supremacy, there has been coming in a new set of doubts, or anxieties, concerning the whole process. This concern may be only one way of recognizing the sovereignty of the ballot. If it is sovereign, care must be taken that it functions safely. Granted that its decisions are conclusive, the more reason for seeing to it that they are freely and clearly pronounced. If we are to listen for the voice of the people in their votes, nothing must be permitted to obstruct or confuse that utterance.
It was doubtless this feeling that lay behind the movement to reform and simplify the ballot and to guard elections against corruption. That is a long and familiar story. One device after another, one safeguard following another, has been urged and adopted, and each has in its turn done something to purify our electoral methods. It would be impossible for the nation to lurch back now to the loose and hugger-mugger system under which both State and national elections were held fifty or sixty years ago. The “repeater” has been largely eliminated; the way of the venal voter has been made hard; official ballots have replaced the tricky things that party-workers used to “hand out”; corrupt-practice acts and registration laws have weeded out a great deal of the bribery and fraud that were formerly common. Yet despite all these and the other advances, a distinctly new uneasiness about the whole process of voting has recently been making itself manifest. Many thoughtful citizens have been troubled by doubts not whether elections are honest, but whether they can be made fully representative of the popular will; not whether the citizen can freely cast a pure ballot, but whether he cares enough about it to cast any ballot at all.
What disturbs many in this connection is the evidence seeming to show that the number of voters is not increasing as fast as the population. Figures both of registered voters and of actual ballots cast are scrutinized, with the result of appearing to prove a growing disinclination to make full exercise of the right of suffrage. From one Presidential campaign to another during the last dozen years, the total poll has not risen as it should. Some statistics of the vote in Wisconsin were recently published which seemed startling in their implications. That State, though having a marked growth in population, has been casting a vote fewer by many thousands than were polled ten years ago. Partial explanations suggest themselves. Wisconsin elections have been one-sided and foregone conclusions; so that the inducement to make efforts to bring out a full vote has often been lacking. Moreover, the very reforms in the State’s election laws may have had the effect of cutting off what was before a purchasable or fraudulent vote. This was the kind of vote which in the old days Tammany used to ask for money in order to “get out.” One rich man replied to a solicitor of funds that he would not give five thousand dollars to get that vote “out,” but would gladly subscribe ten thousand to keep it “in.” It is possible that the keeping “in” of corrupt votes, by means of reform legislation vigorously enforced, has had something to do with the apparent check in the normal increase of the voters.
After every fair allowance has been made, however, the fact is notorious that many citizens entitled to vote do not go to the polls. The registration figures often fall far below what they should be, and the ballots finally cast and counted reveal a surprisingly large number of indifferents or stay-at-homes. Hence the demand, which seems to be a rising demand, that the citizen be compelled by law to do his duty as an elector, if he will not do it unforced. Compulsory voting has been advocated of late by the Attorney-General of the United States. No one would class Mr. Wickersham among the impetuous faddists. He has studied European practice and precedents in the matter of inflicting penalties upon citizens who fail to exercise the franchise, and favors the adoption of some modified form of such legislation in this country. The argument for it will certainly be greatly reinforced if we are widely to enter upon the experiment of law-making by initiative and referendum. The people are sovereign, but if only a portion of them speak, how are we to know the real voice of authority? There have been elections, some of them passing on statutes referred to the electorate, some on important constitutional changes, in which the votes of only a majority of a minority were effective. If that should become common, the case for compulsory voting would obviously be stronger. Objections to it at present lie mainly against details. It is urged, for example, that no compulsion should be laid upon the voter to choose between two candidates neither of whom could he conscientiously support. But in that event he could cast a blank or a “scratched” ballot. He is within his right in refusing to express a preference between two equally offensive nominees; but it may be held that he has no right to remain away from the polls. Mr. Chesterton has argued that all who fail to vote should be “counted in the negative,” but that is to put a premium upon sloth. An active negative by ballot is much more significant than mere abstention. We know too well what “apathy” means in elections; but we should be much better off if, instead of their apathy at home, we had all our citizens expressing their honest zeal or their burning indignation at the polls.
The whole subject is not yet ripe for positive remedies embodied in law, but the deep interest taken in it is both suggestive and encouraging. It helps one to believe that the democratic experiment will continue to keep level with its problems as they successively present themselves. Whatever the exact method of reform that may be adopted, it must not omit to tie up intelligence with duty. Voting, whether it should be made compulsory or not, cannot safely be severed from education. The two must always go together, as they did in Emerson’s vision of the ideal commonwealth, where, before
Each honest man shall have his vote,
Each child shall have his school.